James Towey, president of my alma mater (St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA) and formerly the head of Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, recently resigned, after a two-year period of rising, student, faculty, and alumni anger and protest. Towey is an utterly disgusting individual who ran roughshod over faculty, staff, and students. One of the faculty members who was outspokenly opposed to Towey (most of the tenured faculty signed a letter to the Board decrying Towy's administration) was a Benedictine priest and professor of anthropology, Father Mark Gruber. In what looks like an act of retaliation, Towey and his execrable crew of supporters, including the Archabbot Douglas Nowicki and a wretched monk name Campion Gavaler, had the Pennsylvania State Police confiscate Father Mark's computer, telling the police that it contained child pornography. This is not true. Read the story in today's Inside Higher Education for the details: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/30/vincent.
I have been involved in alumni efforts to get rid of Towey and Nowicki. In all my years in academe, this is one of the lowest things I have seen. The professor has been denied the right to teach and to say Mass. He has hired a lawyer, however, and put his case to canon lawyers as well. There is every reason to think he will be completely exonerated. The police have refused to bring charges, and the initial Church investigation found no merit to the charges either. But his life is in shambles.
It is more than ironic that a super righteous religious zealot like Towey would use child pornograhy charges against an opponent, knowing that this would resonate with so many people, in light of the horrible behavior of so many priests.
By the way, before his gig with the Bush administration, Towey was US attorney for the Albanian charlatan, Mother Teresa.